I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast, but as usual, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I only had time for a bowl of grapes before leaving for my English in the World class.
I arrived to wait in front of the occupied classroom at the same time as Chuanqi. We chatted and he asked for my email address, so I wrote it on his phone. He's from Manchuria in Northeast China.
The first half was on our Saturday news article assignment.
English as a colonial language: the inner circle.
Chapter 1 of English in the World talks about identities. Shame, confusion, etc. Kinds of colonization: Displacement, marginalization, Indigenous replacement where indignities were extirpated and other inhabitants brought in. Pidgins and creoles. Other definitions of English in the first chapter. English defined by its history is the key origin. Ongoing interactions continue to create English. English is defined in the way it is used.
TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores.
Bangladesh moving from official English to its own official language.
Some varieties of English creoles and pidgin are special because of their history and form. But some say creoles are not structurally distinct.
Northern Ireland articles on Gaelic.
Chuanqi said bilingual signs in Ireland are having their English parts defaced.
Ulster Scots.
Rez accent.
New Zealand just has one Indigenous language and so it is easier to support.
The Inner circle sets the norms.
The Miriam Webster Dictionary has recognized "irregardless" as a word.
The Oxford Dictionary closed its Canadian press in 2008 so there have been no Oxford updates in Canadian English since then.
Nigerian students challenge the English proficiency requirement.
Most indigenous borrowings in Canada are place names and flora and fauna.
English acquired Latin vocabulary as science expanded.
Exonormative standardization: English as the norm.
Codification of Canadian English is endonormative stabilization.
We had a break.
Someone thanked the professor for showing the slide for the article about Lisa LeBlanc that I posted.
We broke off into groups for three minutes to discuss how to increase exposure to Indigenous languages. I talked about changing the name of an entire river like the St John in New Brunswick back to its original name of Wolastoq. But the problem is that the Wolastoqiyik people can't agree on spelling or pronunciation. Professor Percy said standardization is a colonial practice.
We looked at Lee Maracle's story "Charlie".
She uses metalanguage. We are in the language of the characters.
The story is based on a real event, which was the running away and freezing to death of Chanie Wenjack in 1966. It was reported in Maclean's in 1967 and the journalist Ian Adams was fired because of the article.
Willie Dunn recorded a song about it in 1971. Gord Downie also wrote a song about it called "The Secret Path".
"Charlie" has an omniscient narrator.
The instructors don't belong either.
I said it is a way of expanding the sense of the futility of the residential schools to include white people.
I asked the professor if she'd ever seen Little Britain but she said she hadn't. I mentioned that there had been an ongoing skit in which a moderator named Marjorie can never understand the speech of a woman who is visibly of South Asian descent even though her English is perfect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFjDzaH3lKU
Since I got a notice that tomorrow night's Medieval Literature class would be online, after class I went to Staples to buy a webcam. The last time I bought a webcam there I had to return it because my old computer couldn't handle it. I assume my new computer can take the new ones. One that was on sale for $176 was out of stock and so I bought the 4K Pro for $226.79 after tax.
I weighed 84 kilos before a late lunch at 14:15. I'd have to scroll back a long time to find when I was that light before and so I didn't bother.
I took a late siesta at 15:00 and got up at 16:30.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 16:55.
I roasted a pork sirloin in the oven, this time with just olive oil and salt because I had no time to get fancy.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:25.
I answered the Exit Slip survey for today's class.
One of the articles that stood out was that bilingual road signs are being defaced in Ireland. In some cases, the English names are being crossed out and in others, the Gaelic is covered over. Obviously, a war is going on but at least now there are no bombs involved.
What stood out for me about the story "Charlie" was that the old woman tries to dissuade the little boy Charlie from venturing on a long trek in the winter cold in a spring jacket by promising him a fine time. She could have tried to stop him with a logical argument against the dangers or actually stood in his way. By not doing so she effectively killed him.
I had a potato with gravy while watching the 19th episode of Ben Casey and also while the pork was still cooking. I had a slice of pork after I'd finished the potato.
This was a more interesting and unique story than the usual Ben Casey episodes.
A novice nun named Catherine Huett is having a dizzy spell on a school playground when she is hit by a swing and knocked unconscious. Her physician Dr. Reiner thinks she has blood clots in the brain that should be removed with an operation, and meanwhile, he prescribes morphine. Casey thinks she has myasthenia gravis and a respiratory depressant like morphine could kill her. Since she is Reiner's patient, his diagnosis overrides Casey's.
That night Catherine has a respiratory failure but Casey manages to save her.
Casey says that pregnancy has been known to cure myasthenia gravis.
Catherine's father John Huett is a powerful newspaper owner and Reiner tells him that Catherine's thymus needs to be removed as soon as possible. Huett asks Casey's opinion and he tells him that the removal of the thymus should not be done without more observation. Huett pressures Casey into offering his opinion of Reiner, so Casey lets it slip that Reiner is a medical incompetent and should not be practicing medicine. Huett publishes that statement in his paper and Reiner sues Casey.
At Zorba's recommendation, Casey hires a lawyer named Sam Bundy who recommends that Casey retract his statement about Reiner. Casey is in danger of losing his license to practice medicine and asks Huett to publish a retraction but Huett tells him his reporters have uncovered crucial information about Reiner.
In court, it almost sounds at first as if Bundy is arguing on Reiner's behalf but when he cross-examines Reiner it is discovered that he has been dismissed from more than one other hospital and even caused the death of his own child with a faulty diagnosis.
We see Catherine in the end, apparently fully recovered but it seems she has left the convent. There is no explanation as to why. Huett pays Casey's legal bill.
Bundy was played in a powerful performance by Ed Begley, who left home at the age of eleven and drifted from job to job. It wasn't until he was thirty that he began working on vaudeville and radio. He was in his forties by the time he became a theatrical success. His first movie was Boomerang in 1947. He was in his fifties when he won the Tony Award for his performance in Inherit the Wind on Broadway. He co-starred in the film Patterns of Power in 1956. He won the best supporting actor Oscar in 1962 for Sweet Bird of Youth. He co-starred in The Billion Dollar Brain in 1967.
I searched for bedbugs and for the second night in a row I found none.
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